Visionless Victory or Democratic Duty? How Strategic Game Framing of Elections Affects Citizen Meanings of Voting

Elections are overwhelmingly covered in terms of parties’ strategic considerations, rather than the substantive content of their policies. The existing literature shows that after exposure to such ‘strategic game frames’, citizens tend to be more cynical about politics, but but it does not seem to affect whether or not citizens vote and citizens are even more certain about who to vote for. Therefore, we must conclude that strategic game frames do not change the inclination to vote, but rather the meaning that citizens adhere to voting. In this study, we test the effect of strategic game framing on four types of meanings of voting, as defined by Riker and Ordeshook in the 1960s: instrumental voting (voting in order to achieve a certain outcome), expressive voting (voting to express one’s preferences or identity), ethics voting (voting to comply with ethical standards) and allegiance voting (voting to support the democratic system). The research question is studied in a panel analysis is during the US 2022 midterm elections. Here, I use subjective perceptions of exposure to strategic game frames to test the effect on change in meanings of voting before and during the electoral campaign. Currently, data collection is completed, but the results are not yet analyzed. The results are expected to illuminate the effects that strategic game framing has on citizens’ understanding of voting itself. Since tentative evidence shows that particularly instrumental voting has a detrimental effect on satisfaction with democracy for election losers, this study tests a key possible factor in the decline of democratic support worldwide.